


Decay of the Soul

by stardropdream (orphan_account)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Emotional Abuse, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Incest, Non-Graphic Violence, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 21:50:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/679247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is 1933, and Ukraine is hungry; for food, for her people, for her freedom, and for what she used to know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Decay of the Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ August 20, 2009.
> 
> Warning: Deals with very heavy topics, such as the USSR, mass starvation / famine, abuse, manipulation, etc etc. This fic deals with sensitive topics and is in no way meant to offend anyone. The opinions expressed by characters do not necessarily reflect those of the author.

  
These days, her house was dark and empty. It was strange, to feel so completely lost and scared. While her lands outside flourished, she felt the weight of her people dragging her shoulders down. Bags under her eyes, her skin translucent when it’d once been warmed by the sun as she worked in the fields, it was hard to live at times like these. She could hear her people crying for help in the confines of her heart, and it tore her apart to know that she couldn’t do anything for them.   
  
Her empty house. She oftentimes sat in silence, these days. She was too scared to look out the window now, out at lands that weren’t destroyed but might as well have been barren. It wasn’t hers anymore, somehow. Most days, she spent her time looking backwards, to days that were no longer hers. Days she remembered with such bitter sweetness.   
  
In the distance, she heard the door open. She knew a lock would never work, not against him.   
  
There was as time when her brother and sister were so small, so young. Now, they were taller than she was. She couldn’t remember when it had happened, when Belarus grew into such a passionate young woman, when her brother grew taller and stronger, when his eyes grew so cold. Cold as Siberia. She could remember the day their world changed. It was engraved on her flesh, in the concaves of her heart.   
  
She heard the footsteps but didn’t turn to greet her guest. She knew who it was, could identify the heavy footfalls of heavy boots as they moved across her home, towards her. Her house was dark but she could still see his shadow as he towered over her, standing behind her. She stiffened visibly and hated that she did, eyes staring almost vacantly at the wall, tracing the shape of his large shadow and wondering why he had grown so tall so quickly.   
  
“Sister,” he said in greeting, voice low with a promise she hoped he wouldn’t keep.   
  
Ukraine said nothing, eyes still wide as she stared at the wall. Her stomach protested in hunger, and her heart clenched when her thoughts settled on how her brother was the cause for this hunger, his policies. She didn’t want to blame him, not her brother. Not her precious little brother. All she could do was blame herself, blame herself for how she couldn’t protect her people or protect her brother, even if she was protecting him from himself.   
  
She didn’t recognize her brother anymore.   
  
“It’s rude not to greet me,” her brother said softly, deceptively calm. She could hear the cruelty in his words and hated that it was there at all.   
  
“… Hello,” she whispered. “Hello, brother.”  
  
“Much better,” he murmured and she could picture the way his empty smile must be twisting across his face. A hand touched the back of her head, stroking down the thin hair, blonde and listless. She squeezed her eyes shut and fought back the urge to burst into tears. He asked her, “How are you?”   
  
She debated saying she was fine, as that was most likely what her brother was expecting. He passed his hand absently over the back of her head, palming her skull and etching the dips and curves into his memory. The shadow shifted on the wall and she didn’t see it with her eyes shut, didn’t see the way he rested on his water pipe, leaning over her and the way his shadow curled in around her, enveloping her completely.   
  
“I’m hungry,” she finally admitted, and as if beckoned, her stomach grumbled loudly, piercing the silence of her house. She opened her eyes, looked at her brother’s shadow before looking down with hooded eyes, peering at her clenched hands without much sympathy, watched the way her paled fingers grasped at one another until the knuckles turned white.   
  
He kept petting her hair, deceptively calm and nurturing even as he spoke his empty words, “Is that so?”  
  
“Yes,” she said and felt her heart squeeze tight in her chest, even as she felt the warnings calling out to her to be silent, to not say another word. “My people are starving. It’s peacetime, and yet they are dying. I can’t do anything for them. We have crops and yet they starve… it’s because you—”  
  
He didn’t allow her to finish that sentence, because suddenly, with a tightening grip in her hair, her head yanked back. He pulled her head back so that for the first time she was forced to look at her brother, at the narrowing cold eyes staring straight into her petrified ones. She watched his face darken considerably.   
  
“Because I what?” he whispered and he did not smile now. “You aren’t blaming me, sister. Surely you aren’t blaming me?”   
  
She stared at him in shock, and felt her body scream out to her to recoil, to pull away. But Ukraine couldn’t tear her eyes away from her brother, and when she tried to speak she felt her throat constrict painfully. The air refused to pass through, and all the while her brother stared down at her with cold eyes and a dark face, grip tight and possessive.   
  
“Aren’t you?” Russia asked her again, fingers curled painfully in her blonde hair and yanking. Her body was too weak to protest and even so, she knew that she couldn’t fight against Russia. Not her brother, who she’d always wanted to protect. She tried to pull her head away from his grip, but he jerked it back when he felt her retreat.  
  
“Brother…”  
  
“Answer me,” he ordered, face hard. “Are you blaming me because your backwards people are too stupid to feed themselves? Is that it? Is that what you’re saying, sister?”   
  
“N-no,” she began.  
  
“You’ve been listening to your nationalists again, haven’t you? With them saying that you’re somehow better than me, when you should be appreciating all I do for you.” He observed her, tilting his head in a fashion that was almost comically reminiscent to his curious inquiries as a child. He smiled again, and it was somehow more terrifying than before. It didn’t suit his face. “You know I hate to be taken for granted. You know that I do so much for you, and you repay me by humoring your pathetic nationalists. They’re dangerous, you know.”   
  
“I hadn’t—”  
  
“Do you think you’re the only one who’s had to make sacrifices for the good of all of us, sister?”   
  
“That’s not what I was saying,” she cried out, squirming against his hold and rewarded only with the tightening of his grip. She shook her head from side to side and stared up at him with pleading eyes, knowing that this anger was not only anger, but feelings of betrayal. She wanted to protect her brother, no matter what. That was all she’d ever wanted. “The rationing… it’s just… I know that you only want to do good.” She hoped that was the case. Somehow, she couldn’t imagine, wouldn’t accept, that her brother could intentionally be cruel. “I know that. But my people are dying of hunger. They’re… they’re…”   
  
She couldn’t finish her statement, couldn’t begin to admit to the hideous acts her people had been driven to—anything for food, even if that food was a human. She shook under her brother’s hold, looking up at him and silently pleading for understanding.   
  
“So you’re blaming me for all this, are you?” he hissed and thrashed her head back until her neck felt as if it would snap. “Somehow it’s my fault that your barbaric people are having these kinds of difficulties?”   
  
“N-no, I—”  
  
“That’s what I thought,” he hissed, cutting her off. “Surely sister would not insult my generosity and protection like that.”  
  
“No, but—”  
  
“Of course she wouldn’t,” he continued as if she had not spoken. “Sister is kinder than that. She knows that I’m doing everything I can to protect her and make her happy. It isn’t my fault if she is not thankful, if her people are rude to me and my efforts. So, so cruel, dear sister.”   
  
Ukraine bit her lip, forced to keep eye contact with Russia. She tried to swallow around the lump in her throat, tried to summon the words she knew she had to say, but didn’t have the strength to. He watched her, smiling that same smile, and she felt the room turn stone cold, colder than ice. She felt as if she would cry. Her brother was upset and her people were dying. She couldn’t betray them, but somehow she knew that she most likely would.   
  
Staring up into her brother’s eyes, all she could think was _I’m a despicable person, to think this way._   
  
To choose between her brother, her family, and her people, the people who made up her heart and helped her live her days hoping for a future not like this. Every moment she felt a tiny flame of life snuff out and knew that she was spiraling further and further into despair, as bodies rotted away and her people feasted on flesh that they should not hold. And all the while, her brother calling them barbaric for turning to such a terrible reality.   
  
What was she to do?   
  
She stared at her brother and felt as if her heart had broken into a thousand pieces. Then, she shifted her eyes away from him, out her window to her desolate home, once so beautiful.  
  
The hand in her hair shifted away, replaced by a hand curling around her throat. She choked as he shoved her against the wall, his palm pressed against her wind pipe as his free hand grasped her chin and tilted it upwards so that they were forced to make eye contact once again.   
  
“Are you doubting me?”  
  
She shook her head.  
  
He watched her. “Are you looking down on me now? Do you betray me based on delusions?”  
  
She choked on the words as she struggled to tell him wrong, and wondered why she hesitated in that moment to tell him—how could she be hesitating when she should be striving to reassure her only brother. Her hands moved to push, or perhaps pull, against him and breezed over the scarf she’d given him so long ago. How distant those days were now. How she missed them.   
  
She managed to shake her head.   
  
“Then why do you turn away from me when all I want is to protect you?”  
  
She clenched her eyes shut to bite back the tears stinging the backs of her eyes. He pushed her again and shook her head, making her head slam against the wall painfully. “Look at me.”  
  
She gasped in pain but somehow could not open her eyes.  
  
“Why can’t you look at me?”  
  
“I’m—” she gasped.  
  
“You blame me and resent me,” he hissed and thrashed her, shaking her all while never loosening his hold on her throat. “Instead of accepting your own failures, you seek to blame me as your own scapegoat. You’re wrong. Without me, you and your people would be nothing. _Nothing._ The way you are now, it would be much worse if you were left alone. Do you think that I will crush you, sister? I will protect you.”   
  
Her hands lifted to claw at his arm. To try and pull herself free.   
  
His eyes hardened. “You would be nothing without me. I protect you from those who would seek to destroy us. You trust me, don’t you?”   
  
She couldn’t answer, and she hated that fact. She grasped at his arm and his hold on her only increased tenfold, large fingers digging into her skin hard enough to leave red prints behind, a reminder of just who she belonged to.   
  
He let go of her chin to stroke her face, brushing away the tears Ukraine didn’t know she was spilling. “You are my precious elder sister… you know that I would do anything to protect you, to do what’s right and good for you.”  
  
She was still pulling at his arm, wrapping hands around his wrist and tugging. His grip remained firm, tightening even more as she struggled. Her lungs screamed for air and her heart broke further as she stared into his hardened face, knowing that the child she’d known was in there somehow, and yet undoubtedly dead now.   
  
“Are you trying to force me? Don’t you trust me to do what’s best?”  
  
Hand around her throat, she managed to choke out, “You’re hurting me, brother.”  
  
He smiled. “I know.”  
  
She felt tears slip down her pale face. His free hand shifted to brush his thumb over her skin. Callused fingers pressed against her cheeks, hard and painful. She did not feel soothed and knew that there would be bruises on her face. She clenched her eyes shut as her brother passed his thumb over her eyes, pressing harder than necessary against her eyelids, as if wishing to blind her forever. She did not want to open her eyes.   
  
“Don’t cry, sister.”  
  
She sobbed. His grip tightened, as if wishing to soothe her.   
  
“Life is pain. It will make you stronger. You might think I’m hurting you, but imagine if I let those others near you. You would be destroyed.”  
  
She shook her head, crying. He slammed her head against the wall, and chuckled, wild and crazed and very soft in her ear.   
  
“You can’t blame me, can you?”   
  
She stared at him, tears spilling from her wide eyes.   
  
“And don’t lie to me, sister.”   
  
The words hurt her and she visibly flinched against her grip. Something sparked in his eyes but his smile did not waver.  
  
She looked at him, saw his cold eyes and remembered the little boy she used to know. Before she could stop herself, she lifted one hand. She touched his face and tried to breathe. He stayed there, staying near her even as she longed for him to pull away.  
  
“I’ve—” she wept and found she couldn’t blame him, not truly. She wanted to protect him, somehow. She wished she had the words to fix all this, to fix everything that happened to them, to her, and especially to her little brother. “I’ve never lied to you.”   
  
His face softened, though his eyes were just as cold and distant, and he did not slacken his hold on her throat. She swallowed and tried to stop from crying, but her face was spotted and her nose stuffed up. She could feel his prints on her and knew she was branded, and doomed to be in his possession.   
  
In the end, she could not help but feel she’d betrayed her people.   
  
“Brother…”   
  
He smiled and she could see the hurt in his eyes. She wished she hadn’t, because this somehow made it much, much worse. She wished she could talk through to him, but as she reached to touch his face again, she could see his cold eyes watching her and knew that he’d already pulled back away from her. She could not reach him.   
  
“Brother,” she said again, and he brushed her tears away.   
  
“Yes, sister. We’re siblings. I’ll take care of you.”

**Author's Note:**

> \- Holodomor in the Ukraine was a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, not due to natural causes but because of Soviet policies that left many in urban cities to starve, or revert to cannibalism. Today, it is recognized by several countries and the UN as an act of genocide and a crime against humanity.


End file.
